Tracking the ROI on your marketing campaigns in three easy steps

You spend a lot of money on marketing, direct mailers and advertising. I am

shocked sometimes when I see how much these advertising campaigns cost the practice. How do you know if they are working? Do you know the ROI on your investment? I can help you see the statistics you need to know to help make decisions on your referral programs and new patient acquisition.

First things first . . . your team must be recording where your new patients are being referred from. If you are starting a new patient referral program or just signed up with a marketing company that is launching some direct mail campaigns, I want you to add these into your referral sources. Go to the Office Manager > Reference > Referral Maintenance. Then click on add new and enter the name of the campaign. Make sure to check Non Person and then, at the bottom, click on Referred By. The reason you want to select Non Person is because these campaigns will be tracked as Referred by Marketing on the Practice Advisor Report.

Second, make sure your team is checking the new patients against the referring sources on a daily basis. The easiest way to do this is using the Daily Huddle Report. Look at the Daily Huddle each day and make sure the total number of new patients is accurate and make sure the total number of new patients matches the total number of referral sources. This makes sure that every new patient is tracked with how he or she found you.

Now the juicy stuff . . . you can run a report that will show you the total number of patients by each referral source, see how much their treatment plan is worth and how much production has been completed. This is invaluable because you can not only see how many patients this campaign is bringing you, but also how much revenue. AMAZING!

Go to the Office Manager > Reports > Management > Referred By Report. Next, select the referral dates, production dates and select the referring source you want to analyze. Then at the bottom make sure to check Show Production Detail.

This will be great information when you are looking to renew a campaign or just great feedback to your marketing company

What an amazing marketing tool!

Have you stopped using Dentrix mobile? If so, may I ask what you are using as a login tool instead? If there is something easier and more tightly integrated with your Dentrix software other than Dentrix Mobile, I would like to know about it. 

Maybe it’s just that you don’t know what Dentrix Mobile is or you haven’t been taught how to use it.  Over the past few years, I have seen a decline in awareness and use of Dentrix Mobile so I felt it was time to re-post about this useful tool and remind you that it is part of your customer service agreement. 

One of the greatest marketing tasks you can do at your practice is follow up with patients after a surgical or challenging appointment. You can easily log into Dentrix Mobile and see your appointment book and look up patient information to make those important calls. 

I just finished two of the best books on the market right now for the dental practice, Everything is Marketing and Becoming Remarkableby Fred Joyal. One thing that he recommends in his books is for the doctor to call new patients, welcome them to the practice and ask if there is anything he or she should know before their visit tomorrow. What an amazing marketing tool! This can easily be done using your Dentrix Mobile service because you can make the calls from anywhere and see your appointment book at a glance.

If you would like to read my blog from 2013 (which is still very pertinent today) about Dentrix Mobile, CLICK HERE to be directed.

Creating rich, meaningful relationships to increase your patient retention

If you have been reading my blog for a while you probably have stumbled across an article or two about Patient Retention and if you have worked with me personally we definitely have discussed ways to improve your patient retention and create more meaningful relationships.  In many of my articles you will find tips on where to document these relationship building tidbits about your patients so you can create a dental experience your patients will rave about online.

I met a company recently that shares my view on creating those meaningful relationships and improving your patient retention.  Social Dental believes that the best practices deserve the best patients. If you share this belief, read on.

By definition, the best patients are engaged. They’re not just “shoppers” who are looking for the lowest price on a one­-time procedure; they’re looking to invest in a long-­term relationship. These “above-­the­-bar” patients keep their appointments. They appreciate the care they receive and they accept and follow through on treatment recommendations. Consequently, these highly engaged patients achieve the best outcomes and the highest levels of patient satisfaction. And engaged patients tend to have friends and family members who are a lot like them. Audience engagement is, of course, the key to a building a successful online presence for your practice. Trust is the currency of the web and being real and authentic online builds trust. Not surprisingly, the most effective way to create engagement is by sharing real photos of real patients. Authentic patient photos (vs. stock photography or manufactured content) open a window into your office culture, helping potential patients feel connected to you before they ever step foot in your office.

Social Dental also makes it easy to quickly request Google Reviews from your patients by getting their attention before the distractions of life take over.

The one thing that makes all of this work is for you and your team to genuinely care about your patients. Otherwise, asking to take a photo with a patient may feel forced and cause your team to feel like they’re imposing. When this happens, the process can feel more like a chore than a celebration and the idea of creating a lasting culture of patient engagement will never take root in your practice.

Developing a culture of appreciation is the most important way to grow your practice—online and offline. Visit www.socialdental.com to schedule a demo and
mention this article and Dayna Johnson and you’ll get a $1000 discount off the set up.  

Transform the way you follow up with over due recare patients

I learned the coolest thing today! Actually, I am rethinking the way I run the Continuing Care report. I know, right? If you have been reading my blog over the years, I talk a lot about the four reports to keepyour schedule full — ASAP List, Unscheduled List, Continuing Care List and Treatment Manager Report. Today, while I was working with a team on their hygiene workflow, we discovered something together that could completely transform the conversations you have with your hygiene patients when you are making follow-up calls.

As oral health clinicians, it is our fiduciary responsibility to inform patients of oral disease or infection so they can make educated decisions about their health and schedule them for their preventative maintenance visit. This education and communication with the patient is a full team responsibility, not just the clinical team. The front office team becomes part of the equation whenever patients are balking at scheduling their next visit or if they are following up with overdue patients.

The front office team does not need to know every clinical detail about the hygiene visit. However, having one little nugget of information to reiterate the value for the patient to schedule the recare visit can be critical. In previous versions of Dentrix, I would teach my front office teams to read through the clinical note from the hygienist and find something in there that would build value for the patient like “watching pocket #3,” “needs to floss more in lower anterior,” or “check margins on crown #30.” What happens a lot of the time is the front office team either doesn’t like going into the patient chart or these notes are still being written in a paper chart.

So where can the front office team build their own arsenal of “value added notes” so when they call the overdue hygiene patient, they can say something like, “You know, Sally really needed to see you in four months so she can check how the bleeding has improved in the upper right area” and the patient will say, “Oh yeah. That’s right. She did want to check that.” The motivational note in the patient’s continuing care is a perfect spot . . . and now it shows up on an awesome report.

If you are on Dentrix G6, you have a new amazing feature called List Manager. It’s like doing a Patient Reports by Filter … only on steroids. This List Manager will also allow you to put your Perio and Prophy patients on the same list . . . Whoo Hoo! 

Watch the video below and see how to create a new kind of list.

Find patients with missing email addresses

In our age of technology, more and more people are tethered to their mobile phones, tablets and laptops 24/7. I am not only a practice management coach and trainer, but I am also a dental patient. Like an estimated 88% of smartphone owners*, if you want to contact me and confirm my appointment, the preferred method of contact is email or text message. Many times, the practice is calling patients to confirm their appointments from a back office phone line and the patient might not recognize the phone number … so the call goes to voicemail. In our busy lives, we might not check our voicemail until that evening or a couple days later. By then, it is more than likely after office hours or too late to call back.

If you are using a third-party software for email and/or text messaging, you need to make sure that you are reaching out to as many patients as possible. If you have been spotty on asking for email addresses, you can search your Dentrix software and find patients who have a missing email address. This will help you grow your email list and connect with patients in a more efficient and effective way. You will save time and your patients will appreciate it.

• ·        The first way you can search for patients without an email address is with the Dentrix letter merge feature and generate a list of patients. Go to the Office Manager > Letters & Custom Lists > highlight the Patient Report by Filters > Edit. In the lower left corner, there is a dropdown menu for email. Select only without (see the image below). Check mark patients, but I would not filter it with any other options because then you might skip some people. Click Close and click on the button for Open in List Manager. This will give you a list of patient names who do not have email addresses.

• ·        The second way you can search for patients without an email address is on a daily basis using the Daily Huddle Report. Go to the Office Manager > Analysis > Daily Huddle Report > (see image below). Click on the Selected Patient List > check mark the patients with no email. This will generate a page on the Daily Huddle that will give you a list of patients coming in today. If there is an “x” next to the no email column, then you can ask those patients for their email address.

Communicating with patients using today’s technology and in a way that is more convenient for your patients will increase your confirmations and help increase your patient retention. Do you want to learn more about Patient Retention? CLICK HERE

* Pew Market Research Study

All I want for Christmas is a new iWatch

Is a new iWatch on your Christmas list for this year or are you already wearing your iWatch wondering what to do with it? I have a couple of suggestions for you . . . use it to help you manage your time and patients at your dental practice.

Imagine this . . . what if you could get a little buzz on your wrist from your iWatch letting you know that patient in room #1 is ready for an exam and you could check her medical alerts before you even walk into the room? What if you could then speak a command into your iWatch and it would automatically launch the patient’s most recent pano onto the monitor? Using these new apps designed around the efficiency of the dental practice gets me all excited … and it should you too.

I have learned about two new products specifically designed around the iWatch and helping you manage your time around the operatory. Below you will see a video interview I did on a company I spoke with at a recent dental meeting and a link to another product that I absolutely love. If you are interested in this technology, research both products and schedule a demo to look at each one.

 

 

 

CLICK HERE to check out Simplifeye

CLICK HERE to check out OperaDDS

Top 10 features in Dentrix you are not using

In 2003, my dental practice converted from an archaic DOS-based dental software to the impressive and robust Dentrix practice management software. To say the least, I was completely overwhelmed. Two years later, in 2005, I still felt like I hadn’t even scratched the surface of my new powerful software’s potential so I applied to become a Certified Dentrix Trainer in order to learn everything there was to know about the Dentrix program. What better way to learn than to get a certificate?

Now I know that not everyone has the opportunity to become a Dentrix trainer like I did, but with a little self-motivation and some tips from me, you will be well on your way to being a “Dentrix super user.” Since I am working with dental practices every day, I have the unique opportunity to see what features they are using, what features they are not using, and what features they have no idea even exist. My goal today is to give you my top 10 you might not even know exist.

1. Quick Letters and Letter Merge – Maybe this sounds familiar . . . you have a folder on your desktop with all of your office’s letters you send out to patients, including collection letters, welcome letters, and letters to specialists. When it is time to send a letter, you edit the date, enter the patient’s name, address, and salutation, then sign the letter and scan it into the document center. That process sounds like a lot of work to me. Why not add your custom letters into the Quick Letters or Letter Merge with the proper merge fields and let Dentrix do all the work for you? The best part is it will automatically put a note on the Office Journal and you can “Send to the Dentrix Document Center” without scanning (see #5 on the list).  Here are some more blog posts related to this feature . . .
1. Send letters that make an impact . . . CLICK HERE
2. Can you write me an excuse note . . . CLICK HERE
2. Dentrix Mobile – Have you ever been sitting in the comfort of your home watching the weather forecast and hoping that the power doesn’t go out … then suddenly there’s nothing but darkness. You check the office and the power is also out there … so how are you going to let your patients know not to come in? Has your doctor ever been out of town and received a call from a patient requesting a drug refill but he or she has no way of checking the last prescription or the patient’s last visit unless he or she goes into the office? Both of these two common scenarios can be solved just by registering for Dentrix Mobile. It’s included in your Dentrix customer support plan so there is absolutely no excuse for not using this service.
1. Three reasons you should be using Dentrix Mobile . . . CLICK HERE
2. A lifeline to your patient info . . . CLICK HERE
3. Payment Agreements – I wrote an article called “Get it out of your head and into the computer” back in April 2014. The theme of the article was speaking to office managers who store all their verbal payment agreements in their head. What I am seeing is this is still happening, but I am also seeing new doctors purchasing practices with a significant amount of the accounts receivable over 90 days past due or new office managers taking over a practice where there has been no management of the accounts receivable. Using the Payment Agreement feature in Dentrix will not only help you get organized with patients who are making payments, but also allow the entire team to see on the ledger what the arrangement is with the account.
1. Two options to help you manage your A/R . . . CLICK HERE
2. Get the info out of your head and into the computer . . . CLICK HERE
4. Tracking Gratuities and Referrals - Do you know where your new patients are coming from? Are they hearing about you from friends, Google Search, or the ValPak flyer that cost you $15,000 to send out? Your marketing dollars depend on where patients are being referred from so you should know where to continue spending money and where to stop. When a patient refers a new patient, do you give him or her a thank you gift? Would you like to track if you gave the referral source a Starbucks or Home Depot gift card last time or be able to track a referral source’s gratuity history? Tracking referrals and gratuities in Dentrix is super easy and gives the doctor a lot of good information about where to spend marketing dollars … but I find most offices never use this useful tool.
1. Building relationships one referral at a time . . . CLICK HERE
2. Keep tight reins on your referred patients . . . CLICK HERE
5. Sending to the Dentrix Document Center – This will save your team a ton of time in unnecessary scanning, unnecessary wasted paper, and unnecessary hard drive storage space. When you scan a document into the Document Center, it takes many more steps and the file size of a scanned document is about 100 times larger (just a guess) than that of a file send electronically through the Dentrix Document Center printer driver. Anything you want to print can be virtually printed to the Document Center for file storage. This is such an amazing yet underused feature.
1. A little known secret . . . CLICK HERE
6. Perfect Day Scheduling – Close your eyes for a moment and imagine if you could see your patients on time, complete 80% of your production goal before lunch, get out for lunch on time, and finish your day without pulling the roller skates out of the closet. This can be a reality if you create it. Take control of your appointment book with Perfect Day Scheduling. When you use perfect day scheduling, your team knows exactly how to schedule because you have mapped it out for them. There is no room for error.
1. What if everyday could be a perfect day . . . CLICK HERE
2. The new patient experience, scheduling the appointment . . . CLICK HERE
7. Goal Tracking – Every dental practice has production and collection goals they need to meet in order to keep the financial state of the business healthy. I always encourage doctors to share these goals with the team and be transparent with the key performance numbers with the team. There are several places in Dentrix to watch and monitor your practice goals so the team can strategize and work together on exceeding the goals. You can monitor your goals on the monthly calendar, Practice Advisor Report, and the Daily Huddle.
1. Let's do some goal setting . . . CLICK HERE
2. Looking ahead to  . . . CLICK HERE
8. More Information Button – Have you ever been on the phone with a mom and she wants to know when her three kids and husband are scheduled next for all their future appointments … but you’re not sure what’s the most efficient way to find all these appointments for the entire family? Try the More Information button and I can guarantee you will fall in love with this super quick search tool. You can find the More Information feature on all Dentrix modules. When you are selecting a patient anywhere in Dentrix, you will see it at the lower left corner of the window.
9. Create Batch of Primary Dental Claims – Are you sure you have batched and sent off all your insurance claims from last week? How about last month? Use this second pair of eyes to double check and make sure all your claims have been sent out. Not only will this give you peace of mind, but also keep your accounts receivable out of the 90-day past due column.
1. Are all your insurance claims going out . . . CLICK HERE
10. Patient-Friendly Descriptions – Do your patients often ask what a “resin 2surf, post” or a “Crown-porc fused noble metal” is? Or is your practice in an area where English is not the primary language for many of your patients? If you would like to create a treatment plan that your patients would more easily understand and helps them understand what each procedure is, then start using patient-friendly descriptions. With Dentrix G6.1, it is even easier to use because you can edit these descriptions in the procedure code edit.
1. No speak English, no worries . . . CLICK HERE

Have fun experimenting with these features and working toward increasing your level of efficiency and customer service. Drop me a line at dayna@raedentalmanagement.comif you have other questions. I’m happy to help.

Thank you for scheduling with our office

One thing I would be asked after scheduling a patient for an appointment on a daily basis was, “Can you email that to me?” My answer always was, “Sure, I will do it right now.” Then I would open up my Microsoft Outlook and manually send the patient an email at his or her request. It was a time-consuming task, but my patients were happy. If we could somehow automate this task, we would have happy patients and happy teams, right? 

Well . . . Dentrix eCentral has made this a reality! When you schedule a new patient or an existing patient, the eCentral Communication will send out automated correspondence with all their appointment details. You have the option of sending out a customized email, text message, or postcard.  Since you have the option of customizing the email to make it personal for your practice, why not include a link where your new patients can click to be directed to the new patient forms?

These new features sends the Dentrix eCentral Communication manager into overdrive. It makes me excited to see all the new features making a huge impact on the daily lives of the front office team’s efficiency and giving our patients the tools they need to manage their appointments.

CLICK HERE for more information on these exciting new features.

Unused insurance benefits . . . it's now more than a once a year project

Since I have been writing the Dentrix Office Manager blog, I have posted up an article about this time of year reminding you to reach out to patients who have unscheduled treatment withremaining insurance benefits. This year is no different. However, I think that it might be a project you might want to tackle a couple of times each year depending on when the big employer groups start their benefit year. When I was working in my practice in Washington state, we had several groups that renewed at other times than January. Boeing, for example, renews in July and the school districts renew in October. 

If you decide to generate this lists of patients, you can filter the list by benefit renewal month. To generate the report, go to the Appointment Book > Treatment Manager > select the filters you want, including the benefit renewal month.

 

Since I have written on this topic every year, I am going to point you back to the articles so you don’t have to do a search.

               CLICKHERE to read “Don’t let unused insurance benefits go to waste.”

               CLICKHERE to read “Unscheduled treatment . . . the urgency is now.”

               CLICKHERE to read “Send letters that make an impact”

It's time to replace your paper Rolodex

Do you remember when you had that big Rolodex sitting on your desk? With this vital office supply, you could easily find the number to the local Walgreens pharmacy to phone in a prescription for a patient or locate the janitor’s number to let him know the office would be closed on Monday for a holiday? Oh, you still have one on your desk? How is that working out for you? Did one of your team members “borrow” one of the cards and accidently re-file it back in the wrong order?

What if Dentrix G6 could organize your Rolodex for you so you never lost anything and your entire team could have access to it? That would be pretty awesome, right? Also, what if Dentrix G6 could pull all your labs, referring sources, employers, insurance carriers, and providers/staff into an electronic Rolodex for you so you could organize them by color and filter them by category? Would that just blow your mind? Let’s just step it up one more notch and let you add your own categories like pharmacies, contractors, family members, etc., so you can keep all your contacts right at your fingertips.

Let me introduce you to eDex. eDex has been launched in Dentrix G6 and is one of my favorite new features. eDex will completely replace that paper Rolodex sitting on your desk and your entire team will have access to it because it is inside your Dentrix software. Now you have room for that dual monitor you have been asking for J.

With all the details to remember we sometimes forget things . . .

It’s the little things that make a huge difference in the daily lives of the dental team. There are so many details to remember in order to make sure your patients are well taken care of. One of those details you don’t want to forget is giving patients post-op instructions after their surgery or complicated dental procedure. When you are managing a busy schedule, making sure the instruments get into the sterilizer, and turning your room over for the next patient, sometimes things can get missed. How can you systematize your post-op instructions? Let me show you. J

You can add a doctor’s recommendation note to print out on the patient walkout statement or set up a separate post-op letter to print out in addition to your patient walkout statement. This can be set up to print automatically on the patient’s receipt, depending on what procedure code has been posted complete.

To set this up, go to the Office Manager > Maintenance > Practice Setup > Procedure code setup. Select the code you want to attach the post-op instructions to and click Edit. In my example, I have selected the D3310 Root Canal Therapy. In the lower left of the code edit window, there is a button Edit Note. Click on this. In the lower window where it says Recommendation Note, type your post-op instructions (or copy and paste from another document), then check “Print Note on Walkout.” Repeat this process for all your surgical and complicated procedures.

 

If your office wants a full letter to be printed out with the patient’s receipt, you can set up a letter to attach to the walkout statement and it will print as a separate piece of paper. You will notice directly under the Print Note on Walkout there is a Recommendation Documents >>. If you click on the >>, it will open up the same document folder you would use for your Quick Letters or Letter Merge.

The final step is to default this not to print on your walkout statements from the ledger. From the Ledger, click on the Print tab at the top of the toolbar, click on Walkout, then make sure there is a check mark in the Print Doctor’s Recommendations and check Set as Default. Now you have systematized your post-op instructions for every procedure code to automatically print as part of the patient’s receipt instead of sifting through folders of pre-printed forms.

Patient reviews and Family messenging . . . Whoo Hoo!

Electronic correspondence such as e-mail and text messaging has become one of the most sought-after services in the dental offices. I am often asked, “Who do you use for sending e-mails to your patients?” My response is, “I use the Dentrix eCentral program.” What I love about the eCentral program is how much control I have over the customization and it’s integrated with my Dentrix software. Now eCentral has enhanced its product by adding three amazing features.

I know, for me, reviews are extremely important when I am choosing a restaurant or nail salon because I want to know other people’s experiences. The same goes for the dental office and that is why eCentral is now offering reviews as part of the new patient post-appointment survey. Patients submitting a favorable review will be prompted to post their review to Facebook, Google+, and Yelp. Then, in the patient review dashboard, you can see which reviews were automatically posted to your website and add or remove reviews based on a more detailed examination of the content. The dashboard also provides an overview of your practice rating and other useful statistics.

One of the questions I would get from practices is, “How can we just send mom one message for all the kids’ appointments?” In the past, I would have to regretfully say it wasn’t an option, but now, thanks to all your requests, the development team has made it a reality. This will definitely eliminate a lot of the confusion with multiple reminders for multiple family members and the entire family can be confirmed with just one reply. Whoo-hoo!

People are using their mobile phones more and more as their only source of communication so Dentrix eCentral has optimized the e-mail reminder to be more mobile-friendly. It is easier to read and interact with the reminder with a mobile device.

I am extremely excited to announce to you these new feature enhancements. Since I am no longer working in a practice, I will have to live vicariously through you to enjoy these new features. Enjoy!

For more information on the eCentral suite of services, CLICKHERE

 

Your patients need training just like your pets do

Ever since I was a little girl, my life has been filled with the joy of having cats, dogs, and birds as pets … but with this joy comes a lot of training, stern discipline, and rewards for behavior. Most of my pets have come from rescue shelters or from friends, and that means they walk into my life with bad habits or behaviors that just aren’t going to fly in my house. When we commit to bring a new pet into our lives, we also take on the commitment of training.

You might be thinking, “How does this relate to the dental practice?” I believe that training our pets is exactly like training our patients.    Click Here to continue reading . . .

Unscheduled treatment . . . the urgency is now.

Do you find no matter how many follow up phone calls you make to patients reminding them they still have that crown to do on #31 they still wait until it is urgent?  Well that urgency is right around the corner . . . end of the year unused insurance benefits.  Now is a great time to send out a special reminder to patients whose insurance plan benefits are going to expire at the end of December.  Use them or lose them! 

Even though I make several follow up phone calls from the Treatment Manger Report and document in the Office Journal my conversations with my patients, there is something to be said when a patient receives a letter in the mail.  They know it is important.   Dentrix makes it super easy to search out patients with unscheduled treatment with remaining insurance benefits using the Letter Merge feature. 

From the Office Manager, go to Letters > misc > Treatment Plan Reminder > Edit > then select the parameters for your search.  Click on the >> next to the ‘Dental Insurance’ to open the options for insurance, then click the >> next to the ‘Procedures,’ put a check mark next to  ‘Treatment Plan,’ and select the date range you want.  These selections will help you generate a group of patients who have a treatment plan with remaining insurance benefits. 

 If you want to customize the Treatment Plan Letter (dtxlm21) you can click on ‘open template’ and make any changes you want and then say “yes” to save.  (Remember, however, that when you create a merge, you must always say “no” to save after you are done printing.)

By sending out the reminder letter now, we can help avoid the situation of patients waiting until the last minute to see if they can get squeezed in before the clock strikes midnight on the 31^st of December.